Beau Burchell: Making the Saosin Self-Titled, Balancing a Dual Career, and Studio Psychology

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Bala Gaab Guitars. Founded in 2014, Bala Ga guitar strives. To bring modern aesthetics and options to vintage inspired designs, go to bala gaab guitars.com for more info. This episode of the podcast is also brought to you by Fishman inspired performance technology. Fishman is dedicated to helping musicians of all styles achieve the truest sound possible. Wherever and whenever they plug in. Go to fishman.com for more info. And now your hosts, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek, and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:37):

Hello gentlemen. How are we doing today? Hello, sir. Good. The diva has arrived, meaning me. I don't even mean the guests. I mean me. So you were at a hair appointment, you were saying, what was that? Hair and nails.

Speaker 3 (00:00:51):

Hair and nails had to blow dry that beautiful, beautiful. Yeah. The Maine,

Speaker 4 (00:00:58):

Do you do the Brazilian blowout or just a regular perm type of thing?

Speaker 2 (00:01:04):

I definitely go all the way with the Brazilian blowout. Okay, good.

Speaker 3 (00:01:11):

Would like to welcome Beau to the show of Saosin. Welcome. How are you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:01:15):

What's up? Doing good. Welcome. Thanks for being here. In case you guys don't know who he is, even though you should know, I'm just going to say in case you don't know Mr. The guitar player for the band and also a producer who you should know, he is worked with bands like Under Oath, hands like Houses, moose Blood. The Moose Blood, by the way, is quite excellent.

Speaker 4 (00:01:41):

Oh, thanks.

Speaker 2 (00:01:42):

Many people like it also worked on the Saw four original Motion picture soundtrack. Was it four? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:01:50):

I mean, I don't really want to, I feel like sometimes if you look at people's credits, sometimes there's things where it's like, okay, I moved a microphone. I happened to go visit a friend at a studio, and he asked me to move a microphone. And then for whatever reason, they credited you as engineering the record. And you're like, okay, well, I guess technically that is engineering, but I really don't feel like I deserve that.

Speaker 3 (00:02:19):

I got the Grammy, my dad was sick, and I can't even, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (00:02:22):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:02:23):

And I turned the knobs for an hour, and now I've got

Speaker 4 (00:02:26):

A

Speaker 3 (00:02:26):

Grammy. I'm going,

Speaker 2 (00:02:28):

I'm to my all music right now because there's one in there that's just ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (00:02:32):

Yeah. Well, for me, it was like a ska band, real big fish. We're not happy until you're unhappy. And it has me as an engineer, and that's exactly what happened. I went to go visit my friend at a studio, moved a microphone, and then somehow the record came out and it was like, I engineered this. No, no, I didn't. But it's funny because I've only had one band be like, yeah, we love what you did on Real Big Fish. And I'm like, I actually cannot take credit for that. I need to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 (00:03:04):

Well, in 2004, I was not the choir director for the concert in Sesa with Emma Chaplin.

Speaker 4 (00:03:16):

But yeah, no, on the saw thing, it was just, I think there was a sales install that got used in the soundtrack. But I have done some trailer scoring, like trailer composition that's been actually really fun and cool to do, which I thought was pretty cool. I just did the trailer for, I think it was a year or two ago, that big video game called Injustice, God's Among Us. Oh, cool. It was a huge game. I don't really play video games, so I didn't realize the magnitude of it, but I've had people neither do, I was just saying, oh, cool, because it sounded like a big game, right? Yeah. I mean, it has a cool title, and then there's that new Sasha Barric Cohen movie called Brothers Grimsby, and they use that same composition at the end of that trailer. So

Speaker 2 (00:03:59):

No, that's really cool.

Speaker 4 (00:04:00):

Yeah, it was pretty cool. And then I've done a couple other ones just randomly, and then they get used in these movies, and then all of a sudden you just kind of get a notification like, Hey, here's a cool check. That stuff's cool.

Speaker 2 (00:04:11):

Did you start playing guitar first or did you start producing first, or did it all kind of go hand in hand?

Speaker 4 (00:04:18):

I started playing guitar first before I was producing, but I got a late start on guitar. I don't think my parents wanted me to play guitar. They wanted me to do music, but I think they forced, they kind of tricked me as a young kid. I wanted to play guitar. I was always remember Beavis and Butthead? You remember Beavis and Butthead, right? Of course. Well, some people don'ts weird. What kind of a question is that? Some people don't. It's really weird. It's like, oh, well, okay. Yeah, but you remember Rugrats. All right, well, just different age groups. He's my second parents. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So I was always totally the dude Stewart. So it was like my cousin would come over and he was like the cool dude wearing the slayer shirt and had a skateboard. I was the dorky kid wearing a winger shirt wearing on roller blades, and that's kind of how I was for a lot of the time.

(00:05:11):

So my parents wouldn't let me get a guitar. I had to learn how to play piano first. And then after that they were like, yeah, after you play piano, you can get a guitar then. So I learned piano, and they're like, well, if you want to learn how to play guitar, you better learn how to sing, so you're going to have to join choir first. And then I was like, oh, you give me a break. So it's like here. Now I am already missing out on three or four years that I could have been getting good at guitar. I'm in junior high or something, and I'm still in choir then, so I finally got a guitar, maybe eighth grade or something, and that's when I really got, I was finally able to jump into the music I wanted to. And then even then, I grew up in a pretty really, well, I don't want to say really, but pretty conservative house. So I wasn't allowed to listen to any music that had swearing or strange topics in it. And if my parents would hear anything that had a curse word in it, I would have to bring the CD downstairs and go over the lyrics with my mom. You too, dude. I had to do, it was the worst, had to do

Speaker 2 (00:06:12):

With that as well.

Speaker 4 (00:06:12):

It was the worst. Then I had to do all of, then I would have to go to the Christian Music store and no, I didn't have to do that. And then I would have to find like, oh, well, if you like Metallica, then you'll like Happy Talla or whatever it is, and you can listen to them. And so what I ended up doing actually, is I ended up, when you had cassettes, you could put tape over the top of the cassette that you would buy so you could record on top of it. So I would record the Metallica tapes and put them on the Happy Atica tapes. And that way when my mom would question me what I was listening to, I would come down and show her the tape and be like, no, no, it's this. See,

Speaker 3 (00:06:51):

You

Speaker 4 (00:06:51):

Are a ninja. So I mean, it only worked half the time. I remember I bought Pearl Jam and Pearl Jam 10 when that came out, and it was during Jeremy, I think, and it seemed like a harmless little, I dunno if I can say it, but F word. And my mom heard that loud and clear through, I don't know, our heater vent or something. She came up storming in my room. She's like, what the heck was that? So I had to take that back to, at the time it was called Warehouse video, and it was the most embarrassing day of my life. I was like, oh, I have to return this because it has a curse word on it. And the dude who had a nose piercing at the record store was like, what a wimp. So it was just like, it's like the ultimate Beavis and Stewart thing. It's just, it's amazing. It was so embarrassing. Yeah. But anyways, how did you

Speaker 2 (00:07:39):

Recover?

Speaker 4 (00:07:41):

Yeah, yeah. I still don't, still totally insecure about it, but now, but yeah, to answer your question, yes, I started playing guitar before I started producing, but then as soon as I started playing guitar, I realized I was writing all these cool songs or ideas, but then I also had kind of a terrible short-term memory. So I would write all these cool songs and I just couldn't remember them ever. So I had my little ghetto blaster, and I would start recording the songs into it, but then I would immediately have these ideas of like, oh, well, this would sound awesome with another kind of arpeggio guitar part behind it. How do I do that? So I got another ghetto blaster, and I would sit next to the one ghetto blaster, play my guitar while play it into one ghetto blaster, just using, because they didn't have line in or things, so you just had to use the microphone input.

(00:08:30):

So I would use the mic going into the other one playing my guitar, and then I would have to hit play on that ghetto blaster, then face the other second ghetto blaster, and then adjust my guitar volume and the ghetto blaster volume, mix it almost like a live concert into the microphone of the other ghetto blaster. And that's how I would multi-track onto a cassette deck. So have you heard these things? Yeah, right. It's all the stuff that you just had to do when you just didn't have the means to do it. And at this time, this is probably like, man, this makes me sound super old, but probably like 95 or so. And this is, do you have

Speaker 2 (00:09:15):

Any of these

Speaker 4 (00:09:15):

Still? You know what? I still have one or two of them, but I have no way to play them. I have no cassette deck. Yeah. So answer is

Speaker 3 (00:09:24):

Yes, but I'd love to hear, is there a plugin? Is there a plugin for that?

Speaker 4 (00:09:28):

There is. Yeah. It's funny, I tried to use the Kramer. I tried to use the Kramer tape thing, but there's nowhere to put it on my computer. So Kramer. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:09:38):

It looks like maybe slate tape Will

Speaker 3 (00:09:41):

USB tape machine. Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 4 (00:09:44):

Yeah, it's the little analog thing that you plug in tape, like SB

Speaker 3 (00:09:47):

Your computer saw. I

Speaker 4 (00:09:49):

Saw

Speaker 3 (00:09:49):

A cell dweller was doing, he always posts, what is it, Instagram stories and all that.

Speaker 4 (00:09:57):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:09:57):

He's always on there and Snapchat. And he was messing around with, somehow he was putting tape into his laptop with this tiny little tape player.

Speaker 4 (00:10:08):

That'd be pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (00:10:09):

He had some kind of cool setup where he could record and play back things in and out of the computer through this tiny little tape deck. But I digress. Only cell dweller, right? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:10:22):

I mean, I have a feeling though, if we were to go back and listen to those tapes, our memory of the tape is a lot better than what it actually is. So I don't even know if I want to hear those. I think I'll just live with the fake memory. I'll live with my alternate fact that it was actually really kick ass. Well,

Speaker 2 (00:10:41):

You realize that if that technology was invented, every producer that we know personally who grew up kind of in this era that we did plus or minus five years, has those tapes

Speaker 4 (00:10:59):

In

Speaker 2 (00:10:59):

Their parents' basement or something. Totally. God, so much bad music could be unearthed. Oh yeah. So many shitty mixes.

Speaker 4 (00:11:09):

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:11:10):

Alright, so you started with science recording, that's what we'll call it. How did it become real recording? How did you graduate from science projects to real?

Speaker 4 (00:11:22):

So I had a friend, I guess it was kind of an acquaintance of a friend, and he was like, there's always the rich kid who has the cool stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:11:33):

Yes.

Speaker 4 (00:11:34):

So I grew up in Costa Mesa, which if you're,

Speaker 2 (00:11:37):

I was so jealous of that kid,

Speaker 4 (00:11:39):

Dude. Everyone was, well, I was especially jealous because you remember that show Newport Harbor High or Newport Harbor, it was on MTV for a while, and it was the OC and all that stuff. So I grew up just on the outskirts of that. So kind of the poor side. It's not like poor side of town, but definitely nowhere growing up, my dad gave me his old, he owned a saw blade business thing, and he gave me his old delivery car, which was a 68 Volkswagen Bug. And it had, sorry, I'm going off on a tangent, but it had holes in the bottom of the car. So if you lifted up the rugs, it was all rusted out underneath. And we would drive on the street, and if anyone would tailgate us, we would just drop Pepsi cans out the bottom of my car. They had no idea it was coming from our car. So it was just a good way to tell the people that were tailgating

Speaker 2 (00:12:41):

Just fuck off, dude. So you had the poor man's James Bond car? Yeah, totally. It was like my oil slick. Yeah. Think about what you could have done with that thing.

Speaker 4 (00:12:56):

Oh, that car. Oh man, I missed that car. Sorry. There's so many stories that I could just go on about, but that car ended up finally dying one day, and everyone would always tease me about that car. I would always do these kind of mods on it and put new carburetors on it and stuff. And one day they would always tease me, we would go skateboarding it, and I had no back seats in the car so we could fit more people back there and more skateboard. So we'd go skateboarding, and then everyone would always be like, dude, Beau, I think your car's going to blow up. But one day my buddy in the back was like, yo, your car's on fire, man. I was like, yeah, shut up, whatever. It was actually on fire because the engine's in the back, so you can't really see it.

(00:13:33):

And I had no rear view mirror, so I couldn't see it. And then I finally, he's like, dude, fucking pull over, man. So we pulled over and then my car blew up. But anyways, yeah. So anyways, growing up in Orange County, Newport Beach, all that, I was driving around in that beater and I was stoked, whereas everyone else at my school was the classic. I'm so bummed. My dad bought me a brand new M three for my birthday, and it only has the $5,000 rims on it. Like, ugh, I'm so bummed, and it doesn't have a DVD player in each seat. Ugh, I'm so bummed. And I'm like, are you kidding me? This thing's worth more than my house. You guys are crazy. Anyways, but yeah, so there was those kids and then it was like they, it was like, whoa, you have five AAP machines and you have a Mackey 32 8 console and all this cool stuff.

(00:14:35):

So I would go over to their places and check out some of the stuff they were doing. And then one of my friends knew that person really well and was able to let me borrow some microphones from him, which I think I still have two of them. I still have maybe two of the four 20 ones that he let me borrow now, what, 20 or some odd years later. But, so I went over there and I wasn't super impressed with everything that I was hearing, so I didn't like how the editing was just impossible on DA 80 eights, and it felt like you had to have a whole band to get anything done. So I, I remember it was this white Acer computer, and I think it was Cubase one maybe, and then I had an Echo Layla converter, one of those eight channel ones, and I remember those. And it sucked mean, and what's funny is if you think if you're a pro Tools guy, I'm a pro Tools dude, and to me, cubase is just a little, it's not hard to work around, but some of just the way getting the inputs assigned and some of the weird routing things was a little bit difficult for me to grasp. Now, trying to gradually go over to Cubase in case the next Pro Tools update is another $4,000 once you factor in your HDX card and the software and everything

Speaker 2 (00:16:06):

On the off chance. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:16:08):

Yeah, yeah, totally

Speaker 2 (00:16:11):

On the off chance that AVID does something fucked up.

Speaker 4 (00:16:14):

Yeah, I'd like to somewhat be prepared. But anyways, on cubase one or whatever it was, it was even more ridiculous because it was, in order to change the input, you had to do things. And as someone that was new to computers, like, wait, I have to hold control and click to change the input of the channel, this is just crazy. But anyways, well, you know what I mean though, as a 17, 18-year-old kid who doesn't really know computers at all, you're just kind of like, man, that is a lot to remember that this is just going to lie. Yeah, yeah. You're just like, man, what do you guys, no one's going to use this. This is ridiculous. I started doing that, and then I was putting together my own demos of stuff and then showing those to some friends. I was trying to start a band, and then for whatever reason, people started thinking that my demos were better than the real studios that were around the area. So then it was just kind of all word of mouth like, Hey, you should have track your band. So then I actually bailed all the furniture out of my bedroom. We lived in a two door, three bedroom. Wait,

Speaker 2 (00:17:27):

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. How did it go from all that to Beau should track your band?

Speaker 4 (00:17:33):

My demos just started kind of turning out good, and then people would hear him, and then I recorded one band and it turned out

Speaker 2 (00:17:44):

Okay. Okay. So this whole time you've been refining your craft, working away through the

Speaker 4 (00:17:52):

Dead

Speaker 2 (00:17:52):

Of night?

Speaker 4 (00:17:53):

Not really. I think that this is back in 95 or around maybe 97 ish. So it really didn't take much to sound better than your local dumbass studio that was doing demos for bands. You know what I mean? As long as you had ears and could actually care about the project, chances it was going to turn out better than what those studios were doing. You know what I mean? All those demo houses that were out there, just guys just trying to cash in on unsuspecting bands. So I think just because I cared about it, and I knew a lot of it was like emo and more indie rock stuff, because I listened to a lot of that music, I understood the tones that the bands were trying to achieve. I think I did one band, and then from there, it just split out into multiple things.

(00:18:45):

I bailed all the furniture out of my bedroom because I wanted to get a little workstation area, and my bedroom wasn't big enough to have a bed and a workstation, so I think I just had a little foldout couch and then my workstation, and that was the extent of my room. And we lived in a two story condo. So what I did is I ran a snake cable out of my bedroom window into the garage, and then I would have the bands play in the garage, and then I would record it as the control room was up in my bedroom. And then my parents finally got pissed because I would have these band guys coming through the house and having dirty feet going through the carpet and up and down the stairs and shit. And then they finally let me take over half of a two car garage. So I basically had a one car garage that I built a control room and a little iso booth in. And then that's where I started doing all of the records that I was somewhat, that really got me going. The sales and translating the name ep, the Bled name taken, a lot of those records were all done in a control room and a studio that existed in a 10 by 20 space.

Speaker 2 (00:20:01):

Nice.

Speaker 4 (00:20:02):

Hopefully that answers the question.

Speaker 2 (00:20:03):

It does answer the question. It's the only thing that I'm unclear on is how old you were.

Speaker 4 (00:20:10):

Oh, you know what? Yeah, you're right. I did leave out a huge part. So when I started recording bands,

Speaker 2 (00:20:16):

Well, I mean, if you were 45 when you did all this, I wouldn't be that impressed.

Speaker 4 (00:20:21):

Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:20:25):

Beau just celebrated his 45th birthday everyone

Speaker 4 (00:20:28):

49th birthday. Oh yeah. Okay. So actually, lemme just look here. So in 90, 97, I'm just looking at my all music right now. So in 97 I joined this band because I was playing in the high school church music band where you go to meet people and find other people that might be into music that are, I mean, especially now, I guess the worship world is just huge. But anyways, so in 97 I joined this band and it was a guy that was kind already signed, and I think I was around maybe 18 at that time.

(00:21:12):

So I joined that band. We did one record in Los Angeles, the studio called Front Page, which from what I believe a lot of Guns N Roses, appetite for Destruction was tracked there, and it was the full on big Neve console tracking to tape that whole experience. So I guess I took a little break from recording at this point, and I feel like that's been my biggest hurdle throughout my career is that with recording, you have to dive in and keep swimming. If you get out of the pool, someone's going to pass you by as well as new technology comes out and then you, it's easy to get passed by a lot. In 98, I did another record with that band, and it was the same type of thing. We actually did it at Alien Ant Farm Studio in Huntington Beach, and that was another one of those tape experiences that was kind of cool. And then right around maybe 99 I think is when I started, I quit that band. And then, so let's see, 2002,

Speaker 2 (00:22:20):

So you're maybe 18, 19, 20, those years is when all this is happening.

Speaker 4 (00:22:29):

I'd say probably 20. Yeah, 20 by this point, 21 maybe,

Speaker 2 (00:22:33):

Which means that all those, that high school stuff. Okay.

Speaker 4 (00:22:37):

Yeah. 18.

Speaker 2 (00:22:39):

Okay. Alright, got it. Now I understand at what stage of your life you're at,

Speaker 4 (00:22:45):

But like I said, I was late to the game because I felt like I was held back so much. I feel like if I would've had a good man,

Speaker 2 (00:22:53):

Dave, Dave Pindo didn't start mixing until he was 35. Wow.

Speaker 3 (00:22:58):

I'm curious about something because in my area, I come from the Midwest and small town, I'm curious out where you were at this age. Were there other people around you that were coming up and killing it? Because for me it was the internet. I would get on the internet and I would be like, man, this guy's killing it, this guy's doing this, this guy's doing that. And it would make me competitive, make me want to get better. But were you seeing that around you in your town or in nearby cities, or was there any kind of online influence for that?

Speaker 4 (00:23:34):

No, no. I mean, I could be wrong, but I don't feel like I was really involved with the internet up until man, whenever translating the name came out. So whenever that was, so four maybe or 2000? No, it must've been 2000 threeish.

Speaker 3 (00:23:55):

That's probably around the same time for me as well,

Speaker 4 (00:23:58):

I'd say. So up until then I really didn't have, and I only really cared about the internet when it came time to try to find stuff regarding audio. And it's like back then there really wasn't, at least that I could find. I wasn't too savvy with it, but I couldn't really find anything. I wanted to learn. All the things that I wanted to learn were advanced things that were potentially not even in the manual. It's like, Hey, how do you, I'm noticing that when I'm doing my snare replacements, I'm having to tab to transient, and then for me, I'm using quick keys. So it's like I use the LP and apostrophe to navigate for the left, right up and down tabbing, and it's like, okay, well I'm writing a script for that to go tab to the right, then go down, then paste, then back up tab over again, and then down and paste. I'm trying to write a script for that. How can I make that a little bit more efficient so that when I'm tabbing I don't get a transient, you know what I mean? Where you get those transients that not actually a transient, say in your snare, you'll get a kick sound in your

Speaker 2 (00:25:20):

Snare. Dude, that's that hidden knowledge that

Speaker 4 (00:25:24):

Back

Speaker 2 (00:25:24):

In that day, you could only get that. Okay, perfect. Thank you for saying this. When we talk about how mentorship has kind of died and how we didn't have the kinds of things like nail the mix that hopefully kids are not taking advantage of today, but that are taking advantage of today. These are the kinds of things that we're talking about. It was not so much that you dip the mids on Toms and

Speaker 5 (00:25:55):

Turn off

Speaker 2 (00:25:56):

5K or something. It was stuff like this. This was the stuff that you could only get if you were being mentored by someone at a real studio who would tell you these things because they're not intuitive. They're not just going to find it on some form though. Now you might find it in our group or something, but these are the kinds of things that we're missing,

Speaker 4 (00:26:18):

Or at least now it's acknowledged, whereas

Speaker 2 (00:26:21):

Yes, exactly,

Speaker 4 (00:26:22):

You're trying to do stuff and especially, and Joe, you probably got this a little more especially, and you two all, especially working with heavy bands where it's like, okay, well we have this section that goes from whatever, seven over 12, and then it goes to this, but then it ramps up from 180 BPMs to two 10, but we want our click track to go to dotted eighths over this section so that our drummer could still, and you're like, oh shit, my life. And you're like, shit, how do I do that? So you're like, okay, well I'll call my buddy who works at Pro Studio, Hey, how do I change my, and it's like that stuff was not even acknowledged on the internet yet. And then even crazier things, okay, well, I need to go into shuffle mode and loop this whole section of the song, but it needs to be on the grid. But then for whatever reason, when I'm looping this whole section, the automation and the playlists under this are not following that. So now I'm, all of my alternate takes are all fucked up. How do I fix that? How do I get everything to loop? And those

Speaker 2 (00:27:26):

Types, oh my God, you're bringing back some PTSD.

Speaker 4 (00:27:29):

Yeah. You know what I mean? And none of that stuff was even acknowledged. You'd go to look and you're like, this has got to be a thing. I can't be the only person with this problem. And it's like, you could only find those things after a while. I got to know this guy, Cameron Webb, who's done a ton of records, and I could have finally asked him questions. But besides that, there was very few people that you could reach out to that would know the answers to these types of things, especially working with the heavier and more technical stuff, because it's like the general answer you would get is like, why the fuck do you want to change it to dotted eighth click notes? That's stupid. It's like, I agree, but the band wants it and the drummer says he needs it, so how do I do it?

(00:28:14):

It's like, you got me, man. So yeah, the internet now is invaluable. But sorry, to go back to your question, Joey. No, around me, there wasn't really a ton of people that were crushing it, although there was a ton of super rad bands. There was 18 visions, bleeding through, throw down all these bands that were kind of killing it within that kind Orange County hardcore genre. But for whatever reason, I think that, I don't know if it was just a feeling of that I had to do it on my own or I don't know, I just always felt like I'm like, I need to do my own thing. I never really wanted to go in, I don't really know how to articulate what I'm saying, but I just felt like I always had the attitude of Fuck what everybody else is doing. I want to do my own thing.

Speaker 2 (00:29:07):

So how does sales sin play into this, and how did that change your life? I mean, obviously it did, but did it change the kinds of clients you were getting, or did it actually I know it did because my band wasn't even a 10th. The size of Eosin and my life changed forever. So I know the answer to this. One thing that I'm wondering is that along with that obvious change, did it also maybe hinder your recording time at all?

Speaker 4 (00:29:48):

Oh yeah, a hundred percent. There was this band called The Bled that I really loved. I did their first record, and I think that I was signed up to do every record after that we had talked. It was like, dude, this next record, we're going to do it cool. But because of the crazy touring schedule, I wasn't able to do any of them. It is hard because being in a band pretty much consumes your entire life. So I really had to put recording on the back burner until I could find time to do it. And then even still, I feel like there's a huge, for me, there's a big adjustment period going from being in a band to being producer. I feel like you hear music completely different. It's almost like the whole don't edit the same day. You're going to be mixing. It's two different parts of your brain. And I find that

Speaker 2 (00:30:45):

So don't produce the same year that you're going to be in a band.

Speaker 4 (00:30:48):

Yeah, totally. Yeah, exactly. Well, no, just from being on stage, you want to hear and feel music a different way, and that's completely different than the way music sounds coming out of a six inch speaker, four feet from your head. That's totally different than the way it sounds coming out of 18 inch subs and side fills and a huge stage. So it's a feeling of the way that my body hears music that's a little bit different that you have to get used to. It's kind of like when you, have you ever had a guitarist dial in? It's like, just for fun, have a guitarist try to dial in an amp sound. If you stick 'em in front of an amp, they're going to dial in. Or at least I would hope that they would be able to dial in a pretty good sound. But a lot of the times I find that if I stick them,

Speaker 2 (00:31:40):

Did you just say fun?

Speaker 4 (00:31:41):

I mean,

Speaker 2 (00:31:41):

Yeah, you were like for fun.

Speaker 4 (00:31:44):

Yeah, just an inside like Dr. Evil kind of joke to play on yourself, let 'em dial in a tone. Sometimes they can dial in a pretty good tone, but I find if you stick the amp in the ISO booth and then just let them listen to what's coming out of the speakers, a lot of the times they'll dial in something that's completely unusable, and

Speaker 2 (00:32:04):

I've totally noticed that. You

Speaker 4 (00:32:06):

Know what I mean? And it's like, because they're trying to get the feeling of what it feels like standing in front of an amp out of a little six inch speaker, and it's just not the same thing. So that's part of the energy thing that I find that I had to balance going back and forth between the two. I feel like it was a big obstacle to get over, but I also feel like, I guess that's just one part of it. Being in a band, there's a lot of areas that I feel I'm more compassionate towards the artist or more understanding of over other producers that may not have been in a band before.

Speaker 2 (00:32:43):

You know what, man? Okay, so when I retired from my band and I went to work at Audio Hammer, I guess I was the only guy who had done the band thing for a while, and I know exactly what you mean because there were sometimes things where there would be not a conflict, but something that I could tell was causing tension with the band. And I knew that it was something based on the fact that the other two guys had just never toured before. I would take them aside and be like, if we just approach it this, it'll go way better with the band. Trust me, because I was just sensitive to the needs of a touring unit.

Speaker 4 (00:33:34):

It's

Speaker 2 (00:33:34):

Just something you develop if you've done it.

Speaker 4 (00:33:37):

And I think it goes even farther too. If you've ever made a record and you've written a record, you've spent all that time writing it, and then you record the record and then the producer doesn't deliver what you want, or you find out that, oh, man, when I thought that the producer had too much symbols in the Tom mics, I was actually right, because now the mixer guy had to sample, replace all of our Toms, actually, there's a record that I just worked on where the band went and recorded drums with someone and they thought they had great drum sounds. And then when they got out of that studio and then sent me the tracks to mix, I was just like, dude, guys, this is not usable. I am sorry. And it was like there was splash symbols and stackers and just, it's full on rad kind of periphery style drum kit where there's just so much cool symbol and brass percussion stuff going on, but just stereo overheads with a ride mic and a high hat mic, and you're just like,

Speaker 2 (00:34:43):

Oh, dear. And

Speaker 4 (00:34:44):

You're like, cool. Well, I can't really automate any of this stuff because the way that you're using those stackers is all in between big crash hits that's right next to it. So sorry. And it sucks because we've all been there. We're just like, man, I know what it feels like to just be, it is like all the wind is taken out of your sail. When someone finally tells you like, man, I'm sorry, but you really screwed the pooch on the recording. There's nothing I can do short of, do you want me to reprogram all your drums and superior drummer? That's really the only way you're going to get all the definition out of these stacker things. But if the intention is to kind of keep it somewhat natural, then sorry, you let me produce your next record and then I guarantee it'll sound way better. But yeah, it's just unfortunate when you see bands go through those things and as an artist where you feel like you've been let down a little bit, it is just you're like, oh, man, I know the situation you're in. I wish so badly. There was more I could do, but unfortunately there's nothing I can do for you. It sucks to be in that situation.

Speaker 2 (00:36:01):

I've definitely had to deal with lots of bands in that situation. And usually it's their own damn fault though.

Speaker 5 (00:36:09):

Usually

Speaker 2 (00:36:09):

It's because they're trying to pocket the advance

Speaker 5 (00:36:13):

And

Speaker 2 (00:36:14):

Have their friend track them

Speaker 5 (00:36:16):

And

Speaker 2 (00:36:16):

Then have the big boys mix it. It's like in some ways I feel bad. I share your empathy, but at the same time, I do kind of feel like you made your bed boys, now you got to sleep in it. Well, actually, now I got to sleep in it.

Speaker 5 (00:36:34):

I

Speaker 2 (00:36:34):

Know I'm going to have to fix your fucking bed, but build you a whole new house and paint it and furnish it. It's generally because they're pocketing that advance and hiring a buddy to track stuff that he has no business tracking, been in that situation so many times. And then they just, in some ways, it's amazing. They view the mixer as so powerful that he'll be able to fix any of these problems. And then sometimes I think it's also that they just don't, they're not pro engineers, so they don't know what these problems are. So when it's kind of one of these things when you're flying as a passenger on a plane, you don't hear about when things are going wrong or anything. They don't tell us. So when good engineers are tracking stuff, there could be problems throughout the entire session, and the band may never hear about it. So they may just walk away thinking all he did was put up some mics doing some drums, and it sounded great. We could do this. Oh,

Speaker 5 (00:37:45):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (00:37:45):

We could totally do this. Pocket the money. Fucking go to Vegas and we got this.

Speaker 3 (00:37:55):

Yeah, even extreme versions of that is when I've worked on records before where the band would be like, we want the songs to be more interesting. And so,

(00:38:10):

Yeah, that's my fucking problem. So I come in and add stuff to the songs and all this, and then one of the band members would convince the label to give them 10 grand or 20 grand to go out and buy a computer and buy a bunch of sample libraries and stuff and add shit to the, and then I would just literally, they would the interesting budget, they would just add me, or sorry, they would just send me files and be like, oh, this song's different now. We just did that. It's like another producer just working on the record without telling you anything. And then, yeah, I was just like, what the hell? I was mixing this song an hour ago and the whole song's different now and you're sending me all these new files and stuff. It was,

Speaker 4 (00:39:02):

It's

Speaker 2 (00:39:02):

Not different. It's more interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:39:05):

Well, and the worst too is again, I feel like these last two projects I just did, were just, so everything you can think of that was, I mean, I don't want to say amateur hour, but it kind of is, which is totally unexpected given the circumstances. But things like, I was mixing this record and there was so many times where I normally have it to where when a band wants me to mix something, I normally tell them, Hey, pretend that I'm on a tape machine, and all I have is an analog console, so I'm going to be doing fader moves and some EQ stuff. And then of course, the immediate response, wait, you don't have any compressors. It's like, no dumb ass, just pretend that I can't throw. Just pretend I don't have the AM radio effect button that I'm going to press. If you want it to be am radio effect right there, print it.

(00:40:07):

If you want certain effects in these places, print it. If you want delay on your guitars right there, print it. Don't assume that I am going to just know that you want these things there, but this one band I just did, didn't do any of that. So I would send out a mix and they're like, yo, this is fucking awesome. The only thing is in the verse, there's supposed to be an extra harmony there. I don't know if that got sent to you. And then in the bridge, we want the AM radio effect, and then the drums are supposed to be distorted. And then in the first verse, I'm going to send you over the string part because the guitars get muted there. And I'm like, why the fuck? Why am I mixing this session? It's a different sub. Yeah, this is the wrong session.

(00:40:49):

Why did you send me this? And then of course, at the end it's like, cool, final mixes are good, right? Yeah, everyone approves. Cool. So there's an in-between outro intro thing that needs to go here, and also the ending drum part of these two songs need to be converted to electronic 8 0 8 drums. Is that something you can do? You're like, okay, again, this should have been done beforehand. Why am I stuck doing this? And then of course, me being super understanding because the band didn't really have a producer, and there's weird things with the management and I'm just like, man, I feel so bad for you guys. Okay, I'll do everything I can to make this record work because I would really like to see the band. And again, too, it's like, man, I would really like to see the band to succeed because it's like every record that you work on, the better the record does, the better that is for you.

(00:41:43):

Because no one cares about a rad record you did that no one heard. It's crazy to me how sometimes say, I don't know, let's just say I don't know how true this is, and I could totally be talking on my ass, but I'm assuming that whoever recorded Metallica ride the Lightning was probably really busy for the next five, 10 years, and no one cared how bad that record sounded. They just care about how huge it was. You know what I mean? So I feel like unless the records do well, that doesn't really do anything for you. Which also kind of leads me to another rant of sometimes you get stuck on these projects that last five, six months and then the record might get shelved. I feel like that's the worst thing. You know what I mean? Now it's like, well, shit, now for the next five months, I have no records coming out. Everyone thinks I'm just not busy. So yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:42:44):

It's funny, we were talking to Josh Newell about this, and he just finished 18 months with Lincoln Park, and even at that level, one of the biggest bands on the planet, even at that level, he's experiencing a little bit of that. Well, I've just been on one project only for 18 months. That's kind of scary getting on after that. It's entering the dating market again almost after being married for a decade. Yeah, totally. One thing that I think is interesting is when I was in a lower position in the industry or whatever, or more amateur, I had this notion that things would get, I guess more together as I went on and got bigger, bands are bigger, more organized, the chaos doesn't happen. And then what I realized is there's just more of it, more chaos, like that experience

Speaker 5 (00:43:56):

That

Speaker 2 (00:43:56):

You just had with them, basically giving you the wrong session. That stuff just, I feel like there's more of it. The further you go, the worse it gets.

Speaker 4 (00:44:10):

Yeah, and it's funny too, so many things that you think that are just common sense, or at least as maybe it's just because we as maybe the mixers or whatever position that we are in or whatever type. Maybe it's just the type of person we're in, but I don't want to say that because it happened to me, even on this SEN record, I was mixing the SEN record and I was streaming mixes to my bass player. Basically me and Chris do everything in the band. There's both songs and Chris songs, and that's the extent of it. And it's this amazing working relationship that we have. It's pretty unique. But anyways, I'm streaming mixes to him and he keeps telling me how loud the rack Tom is, and I'm just like, I'm not hearing it. And at the time, I had moved my monitors around in my room, which again, very important that wherever you set up your monitors, you got to be able to trust him a hundred percent.

(00:45:10):

It's the only way you're going to be able to make confident moves. But I had moved my monitors trying to eliminate a weird base null that I was having. So I just moved him, and then I'm like streaming him mixes, and I'm like, man, I don't know, man. I'm listening to this on three different sets of headphones, different like a boombox. And this the rack, Tom is pretty dialed in with the kit. I don't know why. And I'm not sure if he was saying it was too loud or whatever. Let's just say it was too loud. And he's like, dude, the rack Tom is fucking blaring and the floor, Tom, I can't even hear it. I was like, I don't understand, man, what is going on? Anyways, 10 minutes later he's like, dude, I dunno. Oh, wait a minute, actually. Yeah. So I was laying in my bed listening to the stream, and my left monitor is closer to my bed and the right monitor where the floor Tom is, is five feet away from my bed, and they're both facing the opposite wall.

(00:46:14):

So all I was hearing was the left monitor, which is where the rack Tom was panned. And that's why I kept thinking the rack was too loud and you're just like, dude, are you fucking kidding me? You've made six records. How does that still something that happens? And then after I'm done bouncing out the mixes, we get sorted through that, right? Then he's listening to it in his car and he's like, dude, the symbols sound super fucked up, man. I don't know what the fuck's going on, but these symbols are so fucking harsh, man. And they sound like bad MP threes. And I'm like, alright, well I'm going to send you, here's a 24 48 wave file in case there's something weird with the MP three conversion. Here you go. Check this out. No man, it's still super fucked up. Alright, does it sound like I'm listening to 10 different records that I'm comparing it to?

(00:47:05):

It sounds pretty normal. I realize I'm going for a little bit more symbols just on this type of thing that we're going for, but I don't hear it being fucked up. Anyways, long story short, it's like, oh man, I had this weird podcast high-end enhancement thing going on, and it was fucking up everything, but it was the only, our mixes were the only thing. I've been listening to my car, so I had no other reference of how bad it was making everything else sound. So I was just like, dude, are you kidding me? And then we wasted a whole day on, you know what I mean? But there's all these things that can happen that you're just like, yeah, you would think that it goes away, but it never does. And no, as

Speaker 2 (00:47:48):

A matter of fact, we have a story of a very famous a and r guy who we all know, I'm not going to mention his name, who in his office, he had studio monitors and he was one of these neurotic a and r guys who would punish records. He would make records take forever. And he was very, very involved. And his damn monitors were wired out of phase. And we know this because a buddy of ours, a mixer one day flipped out and flew all the way from overseas to go to his office and to collect a check about something else, and then notice that his speakers were out of phase. So the whole idea that the people giving you mixed notes could be compromised. Oh

Speaker 4 (00:48:40):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:48:40):

Is very, very real.

Speaker 4 (00:48:42):

Oh, a hundred percent. And as well as I feel like it's important to find people that you have kind of a mind or that you guys both like the same types of stuff, or that you both get each other's mixing style. I've found that I've sent a few mixes to certain people just on, Hey, man, you seem cool. You feel like ever swapping mixes? We'll just be each other's extra set of ears a couple times. And it's kind of cool to have that between certain people that you can trust that aren't going to leak mixes out.

Speaker 2 (00:49:12):

So do you have your own little mixing mastermind?

Speaker 4 (00:49:15):

Yeah, I have a couple guys that I'll share mixes with and we all, we will stream 'em to each other. And it's like generally we have pretty different mixing styles, but we both know how to judge each other's mix within the, Hey, here's the mix. Anything poking out to you that I'm missing? Because I've been so focused on trying to bring out these fucking stackers that aren't miked, that I may have lost the plot on whether or not the fucking vocal actually sounds good. Can you just listen to this for me? And then it's very nice to have someone that can just say like, oh yeah, no, it sounds fine. You know what I mean? But not the type of person that's going to be like, oh, well, I think you're low end sounds a little cloudy, and I think the snare could have more attack. It's like, well, alright.

Speaker 2 (00:50:00):

And I was listening on my iPhone.

Speaker 4 (00:50:02):

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, with the fucking iPod enhancement on. But it's like all that being said is you need someone that kind of gets you and that understands your mixing style as well as understands that chances are you've already got the mix kind of dialed and that's what the band wants, or that's your mixing style that say you're one of those dudes that mixes with a shit ton of top end or something. You know what I mean? You don't want someone that's going to, every mix you send them is, I don't know, it sounds pretty bright to me. It's like, well, yeah, that's just how I mix and that's why people come to me.

Speaker 2 (00:50:39):

I definitely had that for a little while. I probably sent them more mixes than they sent me.

Speaker 4 (00:50:48):

Are you saying that you were working more than they were?

Speaker 2 (00:50:50):

Oh hell no. No, no, no. I was sending mixes to Will Putney and to Wade. I just think that my mixes were worse than theirs, so I just think that I had more problems. So I'd just be like, will, what the fuck is wrong with my mix? And he'd be like, yeah, I like the snare. It's artsy. And then I'd be like, oh, oh, that means the mix fucking sucks,

Speaker 5 (00:51:20):

Right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:51:21):

No, no, no. I would be like, look, I'm tearing whatever's left of my hair out on this. I feel like it's very muddy. I don't know if it's my hearing or what. Can you just listen to it and tell me if anything strikes you as terrible right away? And just like him or Andrew would give me that immediate feedback and they wouldn't fill me up with bullshit. And also, this is interesting, when you're doing this, you have to make sure that you do trust the person

Speaker 4 (00:52:00):

Totally.

Speaker 2 (00:52:01):

To tell you the truth, because some guys will tell you that it's good when it's not good. Not because they're afraid, but because they don't want you to get better. Oh, totally. Yeah. They don't want you competing with them. So you need to make sure that the people who you send the mixes to feel very solid in who they are as people.

Speaker 4 (00:52:22):

Yeah. As well as being able to not, I guess trying to be impartial to it as well. Because obviously if you're, say you're, you're a metal guy and I'm sending you a singer songwriter track, and it's like, Hey, what do you think about this? I guess it's part of being well-rounded, isn't it? If I send you a singer songwriter track as a metal guy, chances are you might think the kick and snare are going to be not punchy and attacky enough, but within different genres, you just have to be aware of that. And I think, I don't know how this got back onto me, but I feel like I've done a pretty good job as far as trying to diversify myself. Your podcast

Speaker 2 (00:53:08):

Episode, it all goes back to

Speaker 4 (00:53:10):

You. I'm such a fucking scatterbrained. I dunno if you've noticed that. I just go all over the place. But yeah, I've gotten to do a lot of different style records like Mariachi Bronx, which was fucking rad. But the cool thing about that was they actually didn't want a mariachi dude doing their second record. The whole point was, we're all punk guys. We want it to sound like we're a rock band playing mariachi music. We don't want to sound like a bunch of mariachi guys. So it was interesting for me to give it more of a rock impact, I guess.

Speaker 2 (00:53:54):

Okay. Now you've lost me. Wait, mariachi. What?

Speaker 4 (00:54:01):

Yeah. Have you not heard that record?

Speaker 2 (00:54:03):

No,

Speaker 4 (00:54:03):

Dude. So the guys in the Bronx, right? You know that band?

Speaker 2 (00:54:07):

Yes.

Speaker 4 (00:54:07):

Okay. So the guys in the Bronx got, I guess just kind of bored with making regular Bronx stuff. It's like, man, okay, we're three records deep into Bronx. What else can we do? It is just punk music. We need to do something else. So they kind of created this alter ego called Mariachi El Bronx, and they do original mariachi songs, but they sing in English and they're fucking awesome. So I got to mix. I produced an EP for them, and then I got to mix their second record, but they have three records out as Mariachi Bronx. They're rad. I would definitely recommend checking it out.

Speaker 2 (00:54:48):

So when you send this to your little mix, your mix cabal,

Speaker 4 (00:54:53):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:54:54):

They still give you good feedback. Oh

Speaker 4 (00:54:56):

Yeah, totally. Because about taking yourself out of taking your taste out of it. You can't really say, so say a professional mixer named Phil who is super sample heavy and their snare drum always sounds like a shotgun. Obviously that person is going to tell me no matter what mix I send that my snare is not punishing enough. You know what I mean? And so you can't really trust that person to give you good advice on whether or not your drums are good. You know what I mean? Hey, is my snare hitting hard enough? No, it's not, because it doesn't sound like a fucking Mack truck plunging through your house. So the type of stuff that I'm looking for is more just like, Hey, what do you think about this mix? Does it sound fine? Does it sound like me? Alright, cool. And generally, we know each other well enough that it's like, I've sent him Mixes my buddy Jeremy a bunch of times, and he is like, oh, interesting.

(00:55:52):

It doesn't really sound like a bow mix to me. It's like, it sounds good, but it doesn't sound like you. And for a while I kind of went through a long streak of trying not to sound like me, which sounds funny, but I think it came from a couple friends of mine kind of stereotyping my mixes. And I tried to fight that for a while. Because I guess getting back to the whole, how did Sen affect your life and career and all that? After a year of getting a thousand terrible bands with overly technical screamo bands with a singer that sounds like a girl that can't sing, it's like, you just want to kill yourself. And it was just like, man, I can't take this anymore. I got to get out of doing the genre. If I get one more demo with a band saying they want to sound like me, I'm going to kill myself. So I tried to really diversify and do other types of music.

Speaker 2 (00:56:54):

So this was after sales and became known. You got all the sales and clones.

Speaker 4 (00:57:00):

Yeah. It was terrible.

Speaker 2 (00:57:02):

Oh my God.

Speaker 4 (00:57:03):

Yeah. You know what I mean? And it was every band, it was like, Hey, yeah, we're huge fans of sales. And I'm like, oh fuck. I already know you suck just by saying that. You know what I mean? But now I think I've recently gotten a lot of bands that were fans that don't suck, which is cool. Now I really forgot what I was talking about.

Speaker 2 (00:57:23):

Well, do you think that, well, there's so many different topics at this point that we've gone on. Crazy person. I'd like to go on to the original, just one of the original topics. Talk about more about how Seon changed your recording style and whether you felt like you got a lot better at that point, and did you get to ever work with any really incredible producers that were way better than you as a result?

Speaker 4 (00:57:56):

Yeah. So I guess on the big sales and self-titled record, we did that record with Howard Benson. And the reason why went with him is because I was a huge fan of that record Blindside Silence and POD satellite. I thought that they sounded incredible. Little did I know that CLA was a huge piece of that puzzle and when we got into the studio, I was excited. And I feel like every time you go into the studio, especially if you're an engineer or wanting to be a producer, I feel like they say this about every aspect of life. You got to be able to learn something from every experience you're in, even if it's what not to do. So one of the things that I really took away from that experience is I remember specifically on one part of a song, I was telling the engineer that I wanted to have a filtered guitar part.

(00:58:57):

Like, Hey, can we just high and low pass the guitar for this part because the whole band's going to cut out and it's going to go to this guitar, and I want it to sound a little bit smaller so when the band comes back in, it just sounds that much huger. And he's like, oh, that's like a stupid idea. The whole band's cutting out. We got to make sure this guitar is super bright so that the audience knows that it's something special. And in my mind, I'm like, what? It's like, what kind of idiot is going to have the whole band drop out and not know that something just happened? How much do I have to hold the audience's hand to tell them what's going on? So I showed him a copy of the blood record, passed the flask where I had done that, filtered it out for a section during some chugs. And the engineer, I didn't tell him that I had produced it, but I remember it specifically, and I was so mad. So I played it for him, and he was like, oh, that's pretty cool.

(00:59:59):

When you can tell someone's state of mind is like, oh wow, they're actually impressed. And then he's like, oh, who produced this? And I said, oh, I did it. And instantly he was like, oh, well I guess it's not bad for a demo. And I was like, oh, you fuck an asshole. But it was like, but it was like that's the type of mentality that was there throughout the whole recording process of you guys are just children and I'm here to collect my book and $1,300 a day engineering fee. I did learn some cool stuff. When we were tracking guitars, he used a 57 and four fourteens on every single guitar cab. He never moved the mics. He just micd up like four different cabs, stuck. The mics on there, never moved them or never looked at 'em. But the trick was is that he would use different cabs for different parts. And then as far as blending the four 14 in the area that I had always struggled with when blending multiple, wait, wait, how many cabs? There was four cabs, and he had two sets. So he had two speakers miked. Each speaker had a 57 and a four 14 on it. So he had

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):

Lots of options,

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):

Lots of options. But what he would do is he would just have, basically, he would pull up on the console, okay, here's speaker one, here's 57. And then he would just barely tuck the four 14 under there just to where you could feel a little bit of bottom and a little bit more top. But the main character was the 57, and that was something that I had struggled with before. I had always just done a 57 because it was like that's the easiest thing not to fuck up. And I always felt like my guitar tone was cool with just a 57. I've never felt the need to add more, but when I did add more, it was like, I don't know. I feel like it's getting a little unclear and a little weird sounding, even though everything was always in phase. But for him, what he showed me was the trick was just barely having it there. So it's more of a perceived hugeness. And then you can mute that four 14 and the tone doesn't change. You know what I mean? It's just a little bit extra on the top and bottom. So that was something cool that I learned.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):

Does it add a little bit of that roominess thing

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):

At all? It was more just like a loudness button. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):

Interesting. Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):

Which is funny because if you think about metal guitars, it's like you're usually high and low passing them, so it just adds all the extra stuff that you want a high and low pass. So it was kind of weird, but they did actually end up sounding pretty huge. So then he would get that blend on that one speaker and then mark with tape where those faders are, and then just move on to the next speaker, get a blend, boom. And then so each pair of faders would go out to bus one or two, whatever, and then out of the bus it would go into an LA two way followed by a pole tech and then into pro tools. So then basically for,

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):

Do you remember at all what they were doing? Or was that too long ago?

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):

No, same exact thing. He was boosting more top and more bottom, which on the husing Ketner amp, I get why you would boost more top, but there's so much bottom on that triumph, especially the low mids that I don't know why you would want to boost more bottom end unless where he was miking, the cone was just so far toward inside of the dust cap maybe. But I remember the guitar sounded pretty good. We had pulled up a couple of their amps and I thought they sounded okay, but then I insisted that we try the triumphs and he was instantly like, oh yeah, this sounds sick. But it was very comparable to the diesel, what is it, the VH four that they had there? So we did a test between the Triumph and the VH four, and it was by the way that they were miking everything. The difference between the VH four and the Triumph was very little. I felt like the VH four was just a little bit more compressed sounding, but as far as over tonal characteristics within the track, it was swappable.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):

It's interesting, I feel like with a lot of guitar tones, and this is after years and years of being a kind of guitar tone Nazi and involved in guitar tone Nazi activities, I've come to realize that once you get a mix on it, lots of guitar tones are swappable. Oh yeah. Sorry guys. Sorry. Sorry. Gods of guitar tone. But it's true. You just crushed their dreams.

Speaker 3 (01:04:30):

Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:04:31):

I mean, I'm that same way with gear too. I mean, I have a lot of cool pieces of gear, but I used to have a bunch of API I stuff and then Neve stuff. I sold all my APIs just so I could go all Neve because I was sick of, of wasting time on like, oh, I wonder what's going to sound best on this little guitar part? Should I try the API preamp or the Neve preamp? And it's like, fuck, I just wasted 15 minutes and this guitar player can barely play his guitar. Am I worried? Why am I worried about the preamp? It makes 1%, and by the time I have to do all the shit that I'm going to have to do to it, it's going to make 0%. So now I just have all Neve and I don't think about what to use, and I just do it and it sounds awesome. So yeah, I'm all for eliminating any sort of extra decision because I think it's

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):

Easy. Eliminate the bullshit.

Speaker 4 (01:05:28):

Yeah, I think it's so easy for all of us to get caught up in that analysis paralysis because it's so much fun. You are like, oh, cool, which bus compressors should I use? Oh, what about this? And you're sitting there trying to find differences because I think there's some sort of complex that it's like who has the bigger balls of who can find the bigger difference of, it's like, oh yeah, definitely. That one's way more like, oh, field of the two 50 punch that the Allen Smart is adding. And you're like, dude, this, you're talking about a 1% difference. It fucking doesn't matter at all. It's like, well,

Speaker 2 (01:06:05):

I say this all the time. When people read about these differences and they haven't used the gear when you read about it or you hear about it in forums or in interviews, lots of people that are inexperienced think that these are massive differences. So they try to emulate those tone hunts too. But in reality, we're talking about these micro differences that you can barely even hear in most cases and not worth it. But we digress. Sorry, let's talk more about cool shit that Howard Benson was doing. I want to hear more about this. Oh

Speaker 4 (01:06:44):

Yeah. Let's see. Oh, one thing that really pissed me off was, so I have the multi-tracks for that record. And so when we were getting drum sounds, he had KSM 30 twos on top of the Toms, and then 50 sevens on the bottom. And as we were going through dialing in drum sounds, of course, me being the nerd of the band, I was in the control room listening to stuff while the rest of the guys were out in the live room. Just kind of cool, when can we get started? So I was listening to the tones. I was so curious about it. Okay, well here's my chance. I'm finally in, I'm in the studio with one of the, at least what should be the best engineers and the best producers in the rock world right now. They're all doing all the top 10 huge records. I want to see what they're doing compared to me and find out the ways that I should be improving or where I can pull from it. And it was all the biggest bummer is that they weren't really doing anything different. It was

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):

That should be a bummer. It should be a confirmation.

Speaker 4 (01:07:56):

Well, yeah, but when you're trying to, it is confirmation. But also when you're looking for, you're trying to find an excuse of why those records sound so much better than yours and you can't find the excuse. It's a bummer. You're like, fuck, they're doing all the same shit I'm doing, but for whatever reason, it sounds better. But anyways, all that being said, when we were dialing in the drum sounds, I was really disappointed. The symbol leakage coming through the Toms was just absolutely ridiculous to me. I brought it up and Howard just straight up lied to me and again, treated me like a child and told me that he's like, yeah, you've never really made a real record before. And Chris, Lord, algae mixes all of my records. And the thing you need to understand is that the Tom Leakage, because we're using KSM 30 twos, the symbol leakage coming through these microphones sounds so good that sometimes CLA mutes our overheads and just uses our tom mics as overheads.

(01:09:04):

And I was like, you have to think that I'm a fuck and idiot to believe that symbols never sound good coming through. Tom Mikes to me, symbols coming through, Tom Mikes destroys my mix instantly. So all that being said, it was just something that was eating at me throughout the entire recording process. And then once I got the tracks back from CLA, I got his backup session. So it actually has all of his samples that he used on there printed to a track, and I'm looking at the Tom mics and they're all chopped, they're all Quarter note, Tom beats chopped exactly on the bar, just hard cuts. And at that point I was like, oh, that motherfucker, I knew he was lying to me. But another something, he

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):

Love Howard.

Speaker 4 (01:09:59):

Actually, I saw him recently at an inflamed show and he just straight up big time to me. I was like, Hey, Howard, what's up? And he is like, just, it completely ignored me.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):

I feel weird. I have a meeting with him in a few weeks, but if you're listening, Howard,

Speaker 4 (01:10:15):

We love you. Yeah, I love you too. I just wish you would say hi to me. But his engineer Hatch was fucking super awesome, and I probably learned more from him just because he was so nice and was willing to explain stuff to me, which I really appreciated. But then something really cool that we did on base was a very similar thing that I've seen you guys talking about where you're splitting the base into multiple kind of multi-band tracks. It's a similar thing, but it's more like on top of the full base spectrum. So the base tone, what's that?

Speaker 3 (01:10:59):

I'm like, oh, okay.

Speaker 4 (01:11:00):

Oh, okay.

(01:11:02):

It was kind of cool. But it does involve hardware and it involves a specific cabinet. So what we did is, so the base tone was a pretty elaborate setup. So we had the base di going into an Ameg classic that before, so let's see, before the classic, there was a tube screamer that had a Keely mod on it of Chris's that had the low end filter taken out so that it retained all of the base because I dunno if you've ever tried it in the studio, but as soon as you put the tube screamer on a bass guitar, it's like, oh, I just lost all my subs. So you four 50 on down, see later, yeah, it's gone. See you later.

(01:11:46):

So we had this mod done and it was fucking awesome. So you can get that grit and that extra compression out of the SVT, but without losing your subs. And then, so that went into the SVT that was micd up with say, I dunno, a 4 21, A 57, and then some other, maybe a FET 47. Those were all blended into probably that same kind of LA two A and then the pole tech hitting the pro tool. So that was one track. Then it was the DI of the guitar post tube screamer, I believe, into a Marshall Hot rotted plexy of some sort that was going through a Marshall cab that was micd up with just whatever guitar cabs, mics that were out there. So probably like 57 and the four 14, same thing going through the old LA two A pull tech, and then for the subs track, the Ameg SVT four pro.

(01:12:48):

So that, yes. Yeah, so love it. That has a feature on it where you can buy AMP using that amp. So what we would do is we would take the crossover point and put it in Biamp mode and cross it over all the way down to a hundred hertz or whatever the lowest it would go. And then we would send that sub signal just to the ameg. It was like the four 10 PRO or something like that, those really ugly ameg cabinets that existed for a while, and they were super overbuilt and they had a metal grill on the front with kind of like

Speaker 2 (01:13:25):

I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:13:26):

And they had four ports on the front at the bottom. So they were a ported cab with no tweeter, I believe, and we stuck a beta 52 inside the port and that I can play it for you guys when you come over. And that's like if you mute that track, it's like, oh my God. It's almost like the wave's low ender plugin except how or low air, if you put low air on a track, it's like all of a sudden just like that bottom octave that exists that wasn't there before. But the problem with low air is when you go to some notes, it's like all of a sudden it's just super loud and just uncontrollable, but then you try to compress it and it is really hard to get right without automation or getting flutter in there. So this sub track was just ultimate constant low end no matter where you were on the neck. It was just awesome, consistent low end that was just smashed. And that was a really cool thing that I've used a couple times, but I've kind of gotten away from doing something like that, and I just kind of use the NS 10 sub mic now, and I think it's pretty cool on a base cab.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):

So you actually mic up base cabs?

Speaker 4 (01:14:43):

Yeah, I mean, it depends on the band. Like I said, I do so many different types of bands that some bands care about. I guess I'll call it a dog and pony show. Some people care that you're actually recording with a real amp and a real cab and real microphones, and they think that ax effects is stupid. And if you're recording with an amp sim, then you're just not professional. And I used to be that way big time. I remember Joey, here's a true confession in an apology. I mean, I can't even tell you how many times I've probably around that time when 2006 or whatever, there was so many, we were on tour with Devil War's Prada, I think, and you had done their record, and I want to say, I think the drummer's name is David Wright. Daniel or Daniel, yeah, we would always call him Larry, and he would get really mad, but it was kind of like our inside joke. Same

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):

Thing here.

Speaker 4 (01:15:52):

And I think he was telling us how it could be you didn't let him record kick drum and you kind of muted all the Tom mics so that he could sample, replace them later, whatever the story was. It was like, I just remember being like, oh, what a fucking idiot. This dude doesn't know how to record drums. Like, oh, that's cheating. What a fucking jerk. And I've ever thinking like, oh man, that is so amateur. But then it's like, now here I am 10 years later or however many years later on the SEN record, and it's like we didn't have any of the songs weren't fully written yet, and I actually didn't let my drummer record kick drum because I didn't know all of the patterns. So it's like, here I am now, years later using a similar technique, maybe not for the same purpose or whatever maybe it was, but still it was just like time goes by and then you realize, oh wow, I was actually the asshole for being so ignorant to the benefits of using nonconventional methods.

(01:17:03):

And it's like after a while, I think I was telling Al on our first conversation, it's like, man, it's for so long. I was one of those guys that was like, oh, you're not a fucking hunter unless you kill a bear with a knife. You know what I mean? And now it's like, here I am this fucking Indian, and it's like I'm trying to fight a war against people that have fucking laser guided fucking night vision drones attacking me with chemical warfare, and I'm sitting on the ground with a fucking knife. It's like, dude, you just can't compete with all the new technology that guys like you and everyone have been on the forefront of taking advantage of. Whereas that was one of the first times where I kind of felt like an old guy where it was like, oh, pro tools is fucking bullshit, man. You need to record the tape. And it's like, man, now here I am. I'm like, no, fuck you. We're not doing tape because you're not good enough to do it. And two, we don't have time to go to tape, and three, you don't have the budget for tape and four, it's going to sound just as good if not better, because all the shit that can go wrong with it. Yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:18:12):

Well, what changed because some guys still haven't seen the light. What happened to where you let go of the, I guess, the pointless elitist

Speaker 4 (01:18:25):

Ways? Yeah, yeah. I don't know, man. I guess maybe growing up a little bit, not caring what people think as much and then just realizing that man at the end of the day, I mean, yeah, it's cool to talk about. You always read in those magazines where it's like, oh man, well, the whole drum sound of the fucking Coldplay record is because this dude stuck a microphone inside of a fucking dildo and put it in a fucking trash can in the corner of the room, and that's our whole drum sound. It's like, well, chances are the mixer probably muted that. And it's like, yeah, that's a cool story, but at the end of the day, all you really care about is how it sounds.

Speaker 3 (01:19:11):

Yeah. I think one of the things I started to figure out somewhere in my career was like, you still need to create those moments in the studio, no matter how pointless they are. It does create those stories and it creates that talk on the road. And there was always stuff happening in my place because it was just the way it was set up. There was no bathroom, so everyone always talked like, oh yeah, the place where you pee outside or like, oh yeah, one time I took a shit in that dude's yard. There's just always these little stories, but

Speaker 4 (01:19:49):

Dude, sorry, how X rated? Could we get all this? Is it bad?

Speaker 2 (01:19:55):

Oh, we could do whatever. Yeah, I mean, nothing racist. Nothing racist.

Speaker 4 (01:20:02):

Okay. Oh man. Let's wait for a private conversation. Oh, dear. You can get remind me to tell you the story about go poop it out on the lawn. Okay. Oh, dude, we want to hear this. Well, I mean, it's not about me. We've talked about piss drinking. Oh God. So my brother, I mean, I shouldn't, well, none of knows.

Speaker 3 (01:20:26):

Lemme finish my point and then you can tell your story. I was just going to say, it's just as important though to realize the final goal of what you're doing is entertaining people. And I'd always have bands in talking about their next tour, or we'd be working on an album and they're talking about something else that has nothing to do with the album. So I always maintain that perspective that it's not going to matter if your actual piece of wood hitting this plastic is what's coming through the speaker. The little 14-year-old girl who buys your merch at your show doesn't give a shit. So Totally. I always kept both things into perspective.

Speaker 4 (01:21:05):

Yeah. Well, and what's funny too though, is I found it so ironic that I had that mentality because here I was recording bands out of my garage sample, placing sample, replacing the drums. Anyways, so it was all, at least the stories I was hearing is all you were really doing is just taking it one step further and eliminating all the extra effort that was pointless that I was doing. Okay, well why am I spending so much time getting it to sound good to get go if I already know I'm going to replace it all? I think I finally realized, oh, I'm actually just, it's a lot of wasted time trying to make something sound right if you know it's going to get deleted at the end of the day. Anyways, I just found it interesting that I would be the person that would be speaking so poorly of it when I was basically doing the same thing. But I do have a love hate with samples though. Drum samples to me are kind of tuning, vocal tuning and editing. They have to be there almost, but I can't stand hearing them. If I hear drum samples on a snare roll and it sounds like a machine gun to me, my mind just gets completely taken out of the song.

Speaker 3 (01:22:24):

Oh yeah, of course.

Speaker 4 (01:22:26):

And that's something that I still try to do, but it's like, man, back when we were starting, it was like you had to either do 'em all by hand to get it right, you know what I mean? And it's just like, fuck, it takes me three. It's like, cool, when can we hear a mix? Well, there's 12 songs, so it's going to take me about 12 days to lay in the snare sample. So I'll see you in two weeks when I have the whole kit done. And by the way, there's a ton of double kicks, so that's going to take me an extra day. So

Speaker 5 (01:22:58):

Yeah, just

Speaker 4 (01:23:05):

Talking about, I guess kind of being a little bit arrogant and thinking how your shit doesn't stink. I remember one point specifically in the band at kind of the height of the career when I was just sitting somewhere in an office and I had accidentally kicked over my water bottle, and one of the girls there was like, oh my gosh, I'm sorry. Lemme get that for you. And I was like, oh yeah, cool. No problem. And then it hit me maybe 20 seconds later that it was like, oh shit, I knocked over my water bottle. This girl went to pick it up, apologized for me knocking over my water bottle, and I saw nothing wrong with that. It was like, wow. I think I've gotten to a point where I really need to put myself in check and start trying to be a normal human being again, because it's so crazy how even as producers we're constantly trying to build up the band, and especially when you're establishing a rapport with a singer trying to get the best performance out of the singer, it's so important to really pump them up and get everything good out of it, but without being so ridiculously over the top that you're just lying to them.

(01:24:24):

But it's crazy how being in a band and with management labels and everything, you almost, and even record reviews and everything, you start believing everything that people are telling you. And I found that it was something that I really need to get out of. And I think it actually really applies to produce

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):

Probably healthy.

Speaker 4 (01:24:42):

Yeah, 100%. It was definitely not healthy at the height of the band when it was like I was saying things like that would happen. It was like I saw nothing wrong with it. So it was like, man, something's got to change with the way I'm viewing things. And then I also found that it was helpful in production too, because if you start same way when bands, it's like, man, you can't really believe the positive reviews without the negative ones too. And if you start reading reviews of records you've done about how great they are or how bad they are, I think that's kind of an unhealthy thing. At least for me. I don't really like reading the reviews. I mean, it's definitely nice to hear like, oh man, the Moose blood record just got nominated for an AP award, or everyone likes this record, or they like that record, but it's hard to take that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):

I don't read that shit for the same reason that you just

Speaker 4 (01:25:39):

Said. Yeah, because so easy. You find the one person that says, oh man, I thought the mix sucked. You're like, oh God, that one person is all it took to tear down that whole house of cards that you were feeling great about. And I feel like it's kind of a bad thing because I had a friend tell me, and this is going back to the whole characteristic of the bow mix. I had a friend tell me like, oh yeah, just give me the bow mix on this thing. Just the huge kick and snare with Big Bottom. And I'm like, oh man, is that really what my mix is? Are my kicks and snares too loud? Oh man, should I do that? I don't want to be pigeonholed into just one sound because I want to do a whole bunch of different types of music and you know what I mean?

(01:26:21):

It's like you get into that whole like, oh man, should I change? Should I do this? I spent a couple years trying to not mix like Beau, and it was really hard, and I feel like some of the mixes I did during that time weren't my best. And then now I'm just at a point where it's like, fuck it. I'm just going to mix by my gut. And I mixing so much faster and feeling so much better about the mixes. And I find that when you're mixing against your gut trying to do something that's not what you would instinctually do, it's so much more difficult to mix if you're trying to, we've all done those test mixes before. I remember doing a test mix and it was like me, and I think one of the other mixers was like, David, it was like instantly, the notes I got back from the band was like, dude, we love your mix, but we just want your drums to be more punishing, like David, Ben this. And I was like, oh, okay, fine. I'll try to make that happen. And then as soon as I started doing that, my mix just got worse and worse because that wasn't the way that I mix. So I think at that point, that's when I realized I just got to do my mix and because if you're trying to chase what you think people want out of the mix, you're always going to fail. Whereas if you just,

Speaker 2 (01:27:43):

And so you go into a weird neurotic headspace

Speaker 4 (01:27:46):

Too. Yeah, yeah. It's like trying to reference a mix that's already been done and mastered, and you're trying to reference that mix. And then I've done it before too, where you're so focused on, oh man, I need to get my guitars to just be so punishing this record. And then you get your guitars there and then for whatever reason, so hyper-focused on a certain element of that reference tracks mix. And then you come back to it the next day and you're like, dude, this sucks so bad. It's not even close. And the rest of the mix completely suffered. And then you go back to your previous mix that was your own mix, and it's like, oh, this feels a thousand times better. Why did I even try to do something different?

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):

So speaking of mixes, let's talk a little bit about what we're doing this month on now mix.

Speaker 4 (01:28:30):

Let's get back to reality.

Speaker 2 (01:28:33):

Well, I just think that that's a good segue right there.

Speaker 4 (01:28:36):

I apologize for being such a scatterbrained too. Geez.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):

Oh dude, you're amazing. Don't apologize for being you, you're awesome. But we have been talking for a little while and we haven't even mentioned it, so I think that we should talk about it a little bit. First of all, you're probably sick of hearing this, but it's a big deal that Anthony's on the vocals. And for me, it was great. I love his vocals and I love that sound that you guys have. And for a lot of our audience, this is a big deal. And so wanted to know what are they getting themselves into? What should we be thinking about what's in store?

Speaker 4 (01:29:24):

Well, I think you're going to get some pretty decent drum tracks. They're not amazing, but

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):

Damn good drummer though.

Speaker 4 (01:29:32):

Yeah, I mean, he's pretty good, which is so funny though because he hates, I don't want to say he hates our music, but he hates the drums that we make him play. He wishes so badly that the drummer for the Strokes would die so that he could join the Strokes and just play. That's all he wants to play. We have to chain him up and make him play all these intricate parts. Chris and I write everything, all of our demos are pretty much a hundred percent thought out before we show them to the rest of the guys. And it's like we leave a few things like, okay, well this can add some extra. It was like, Hey, I did this crazy high hat pattern, but if you can't play it since I programmed it, and it may be impossible to play, I don't know, then feel free to change that. But that's the vibe we want over this section. So yeah, I mean, he's sick. He hits really hard, which is funny because I don't know if you've experienced it, but sometimes a drummer can hit too hard.

Speaker 2 (01:30:40):

I have experienced it, and sometimes it will choke out the symbols. For instance,

Speaker 4 (01:30:44):

Dude, it'll choke out the symbols, it'll choke out the snare, it'll choke out anything they touch. And I have, so on this particular recording, I went with a little bit higher snare tuning than I would've liked, and I think I used a slightly thicker head. I normally would've loved to use a CS on the snare. I think we used Emperors on the Toms. And then I did not track kick Drum on this because we were still kind of in the writing phase. When we tracked the drums, I kind of knew what they were supposed to do from the demos, but we weren't quite a hundred percent sure on some of the rhythmic patterns, how they were going to line up with the vocals. And

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):

Let me just say that the rum, the rums, the drums sound nice and roomy and natural.

Speaker 4 (01:31:34):

Yeah, that's what I was going

Speaker 2 (01:31:35):

For. So it's cool to show that you can just, even if you don't record kick drums, that doesn't mean you have to go with a faked out drum sound.

Speaker 4 (01:31:46):

Right? Well, one of the biggest challenges, should I talk about the challenges right now or is that something later?

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):

Well maybe hint at them, but we're going to talk about it a lot on now the mix, so don't go too far into it.

Speaker 4 (01:32:02):

Yeah, I mean, one of the biggest challenges was I was trying to, I feel like we've kind of rode the fence on somewhat metal production, or it's like we're influenced by metal, but we're definitely not cool enough to be a metal band. Our riffs sound cool, but they're not actually that hard to play at all. So I was trying to appeal to keeping the kind of emo and rock side of our influence, but while also making a recording that was kind of clear, but I also just love Big rock records, so it was kind of an experiment for me. I kind of like using my own band as a Guinea pig because then if I fuck it up, then it's just like us to be mad at. There's not a whole separate group of people that's going to be mad at me. So I always use my own band as a Guinea pig. It was also one of the first records that I used Ax Effects as all of the guitars.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):

Oh, wow. Those are

Speaker 4 (01:33:00):

Ax effects. Yeah, they're ax effects. And I feel like I did not the best job on them. The guitar tones I get now, I've been using just like I have a 50, 1 50 and 800, and I've been using this two notes torpedo that I've made a couple IRS of this Mesa Cab that I really like. And I feel like the results I'm getting now are a thousand times. Obviously if I were to retrack a record that you've already tracked, you would do a thousand times better. But it was one of the first records where we did, where I did ax Effects on everything because Chris was tracking a lot of ideas at his house, and then I was tracking a lot of ideas at my house. So it was the only way that I can think of, aside from using in the Box Sims, to have the consistency of here's the part, fly it in, let's try this, let's try that. So there was a lot of remote stuff going on, so it was all ax effects. Even the bass was ax effects, even though that patch that was printed on there, I think there was a printed patch. I think so, yeah, I have a way better patch now. That sounds awesome. And the vocals were recorded remotely. Anthony recorded those in Philly, so we wouldn't have to be out here for two weeks away

Speaker 5 (01:34:13):

From his family to be able to stay home for that. Fair enough.

Speaker 4 (01:34:23):

And then what else do you know? I

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):

Don't always mix the tracks that gets sent to us, but I'm actually going to mess around with the sales and track. I just love that song, man, and I think you guys are cool and love the vocals. Awesome. So time for some audience questions. We've got a few. So Rodney ABA is asking, what was the biggest obstacle you had to face when recording Sen's new album along the shadow when you guys recorded yourself titled with Howard Benson? Oh, that's a different question. Let's just go with what was the biggest obstacle you had to face when recording the new album along?

Speaker 4 (01:35:08):

I guess the biggest obstacle was not letting the anticipation affect anything that we were doing. I feel like any band, I feel like that's the hugest obstacle that I see bands running into in the studio. They always let the anticipation of what they think, it's like, oh, well, it's what we think the fans think. They think they want out of our record. And it's like, dude, there's no reason to try to anticipate that. Just do what you guys think is cool. So that was probably one of the biggest obstacles is not caring, is turning off that care of whether or not that feeling of whether or not we cared what people, if they were going to like it or not, as well as trying to do something that was somewhat competitive, I guess sonically, but also trying to not be too similar with everything else that's out there.

(01:36:06):

And again, too, thinking back when we did translating the name, which was the previous stuff that Anthony had sang on, that was so long ago, and recordings have come galaxies since that period in time, I guess there was a little bit of pressure to make a super polished, like punch you in the face record, but I really wanted to kind of keep us in an area that not really felt like old guys, but more kept us away from feeling like a younger generation band. I guess I wanted it to still feel like, I guess a rock record, but could kind of compete sonically a little bit with some of the newer records that were coming out.

Speaker 2 (01:36:55):

That makes sense. Okay, here's one from Ryan. Bruce, if you've heard of him. I know. Awesome. Yeah, Ryan, we love you. What's one thing that has been the single best studio innovation or tool since tracking the first sales in EP in 2003?

Speaker 4 (01:37:13):

I feel like this is a loaded question coming from Ryan, because I would say it's almost like YouTube, literally, because what we were talking about back then, you couldn't get answers for anything. Now it's like, oh, how do I slide this track around but also keep the same pitch, but I also want to slide it down on Octave, convert it to mid and do this. Oh, that's simple. Let me have Steve from Oklahoma answer that question for you. You know what I mean? And it's like there's 10 tutorials on how to do it. So it's pretty amazing how anything you want to do now. I think it was even yesterday, I was mixing a band and I didn't have a flange effect. So it was like, oh, Google, how do I make a flange effect out of stock plugins? It is like, oh, well, you just do this, this, and this. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was like, cool, the answer is there. So that's probably been the hugest help in getting over things. I don't know if you would call that a studio tool, but that's probably the one thing that is,

Speaker 2 (01:38:13):

I think that's a fair answer, man. That's your answer. And it's a good one too. It changed my life. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (01:38:20):

I mean all the information, it's basically information and having it, and even Google too, just being able to Google a question is insane, dude. Oh, what is error? 4 0 4 0 4 E in Pro Tools. Oh, oh, okay. Got it. Done. Solved. Now I just do this done. Now my computer won't crash anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:38:36):

It's a great answer actually. I thought you were going to say the Kemper or something

Speaker 4 (01:38:40):

Like that. Oh no, dude. A lot of the gear, like I was saying, I could kind of almost care less about, I feel like I could make a kick ass record on a Mackey. A lot of this stuff is more just kind, fun stuff to have.

Speaker 2 (01:38:52):

No, I like your answer. I think it's a great answer. So Isaiah is asking, do you use templates as part of your tracking and mixing workflows? And how has your workflow evolved since your first self-produced album?

Speaker 4 (01:39:10):

Okay, so I guess that's a two part question. So I don't use templates when I track, but I do use something called Pro Tools Track presets, which is kind of like a pro tools hack thing that you can find online. Basically what it is is within Pro Tools, let's say you can set up a track, I have great ones that I use is I have for tracking guitars. So I'll create two audio tracks. I have one track that's for the cab or the final AMP sound, whether it's coming from a micd cab or a SIM or whatever. So I'll have a track that gets recorded that, and I'll have another track that gets the DI within that. The DI always goes out to the Reamp box that's hooked up to another tuner. So what you can do is those two tracks, you can assign whatever plugins you want on those tracks.

(01:40:07):

You can export those two tracks as a pro tool, as a new session in Pro Tools. But then if you move that session into your track presets folder and change the extension to A-T-P-T-X-T, now when you go to create New Track, you'll have another folder in your create new track. It's like audio folder midi, instrument ox input master. There'll be a new folder that says whatever you want to title it as. So I have things like tracking and mixing. So now I can just create new guitar track tracking done and it'll create two new tracks and those are already assigned. So I mean, it saves a few clicks, but I wouldn't really call it a template. It's more just the inputs and outputs and maybe a plugin is on there, but there's nothing that really saves me time as far as getting a sound up and running, because like I said, I work on so many different genres that what works for a metal band is definitely not going to work for black audio or 8, 8, 8.

(01:41:15):

And then as far as mixing templates, I do have some things again, but within that same realm, they're just called track presets and it's not even a real thing. So I just have these things where I can create new, I call it vocal processing. So I create a new track and it already has the pitch widener, like a room verb, an eighth note quarter note, a dotted eighth and a half note delays. That's it for the vocal side of things. And then I have all my buses that are assigned with outboard compressors on 'em, and those all feed an instrument bus. And then those feed all my vocals go to a vocal bus. So I have the busing as kind of a template, but I don't really use templates as far as on the actual tracks.

Speaker 2 (01:42:07):

Yeah, that makes sense because

Speaker 4 (01:42:08):

I'm getting, I

Speaker 2 (01:42:10):

Use a busing template

Speaker 4 (01:42:11):

Too. Yeah, because I'm getting, you know what I mean? And it's like people's tracks are so fucked up that I can't even begin to use the template because what works on some guy, if you say, oh yeah, I'm a kick drum, I always suck out 400. Well, if he already sucked out 50 DB at 400, I might even have to add some 400 in there. So yeah, you get it. Aaron

Speaker 2 (01:42:35):

Dut was wondering what was beau's approach to the drum sound on the moose blood record blush? I absolutely love the huge woody warm

Speaker 4 (01:42:45):

Sound. So the snare drum is my, it's a seven by 14 solid shell ash craviato snare drum. I kind of use it on a lot of records,

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):

Dude, ash drums. Let me just say, I've never heard of craviato drums, but my favorite sounding drums are Ash. That is an underutilized, underrated, fucking amazing type of drum.

Speaker 4 (01:43:19):

The drum is great, it's just got this extra thing to it. What's funny is though, is we use that same snare on the first moose blood record, but just tuned up higher and in a different room. But on this record, I wanted to go for more of almost like an Aaron Valentine kind of like, I don't know, to me his drums just kind of have this kind fuddy kind of sound to him,

Speaker 2 (01:43:44):

Eric Valentine,

Speaker 4 (01:43:46):

You know what I mean? Kind of like those old good Charlotte type records where they just have this kind of fuddy. That's how I would describe it. And when you guys come for nail of the mix, I'll show you the room that I track the drums in, and you won't even believe that that's where I did it. You'll think I'm lying. It's literally just a super dead ISO booth that I open up the door to. And it's a small little airlock hallway type thing. And that's where my room mics were. But the approach was just trying to get something that was, I guess, kind of competitive with a five seconds of summer type of vibe, like an Eric Valentine, just kind of like a real poppy deep sound. I actually tracked most of the record, the snare with the drums tuned up a little higher, like a conventional rock sound.

(01:44:39):

And then I felt like it was too aggressive. And then I ended up just coming in here one day and replaying a song myself with the drums tuned lower. And then when the drummer got in here, I was like, Hey, what do you think about this? And then he was like, oh yeah, that sounds sick. And I was like, cool. Well now you have to retract the first four songs because we are going to tune down all the drums busted. But the way we did that record was rad. We actually did a song a day. So the drummer would come in in the morning at 9:00 AM we would track drums from nine to 10, and then I would edit from 10 to 10 30 guitar player would come in, lay down rhythm tracks, and then the bass player would come in, lay down bass, then we would do vocals, and then we would do leads, and then we would finish at 7:00 PM every night. And it was a song a day.

Speaker 2 (01:45:32):

That sounds like a great way to record.

Speaker 4 (01:45:35):

That's the best. It really makes you get bummed out at how hard metal records are.

Speaker 2 (01:45:40):

They really are. Okay, here I am not going to get to all of Michael's questions. He's got a novel, but Michael's saying, and how the hell does Michael not have a last name on Facebook? What the artist known as Michael? So, alright, first of all, I just love the work Beau puts out, especially everything he has done with Eosin. He is just the sickest dude. I have so many questions, I'll just have to let them pour, but I totally get it if you have to cut them. Sorry for the long post. He's excited Beau. So I think I remember hearing somewhere that when you were recording, translating the name Anthony's vocal lines and or lyrics were improvised to a large degree in the studio during recording. If so, how did you approach writing, producing the vocals on the fly? Is there any advice you can give on refining vocal lines during the process?

Speaker 4 (01:46:42):

Yeah, so I've told the story before. So on translating the name, Anthony flew out to just lay down vocals to see if it was a good fit. And it was almost like pre-production. He was just kind of laying down stuff that he had. And then I was throwing out ideas at him and we would kind of just vibe off each other. And then he went home. I think he only had a couple days here, and we did the whole ep and then something that I normally do. So I normally have a singer map out a song, and then I'll go through and chop everything up. I'll not pay attention to any of the lyrics. I'll just strictly focus on melody and phrasing. I think that's really important. So a big reason why all the lyrics don't really make sense on that is because when I chopped up all of the vocals, so let's just say your melody is three blind mice, and I wanted it to be mice blind three.

(01:47:51):

So I would just chop those words and move them in pro tools to make that melody, even though now the lyrics don't make sense. So I just go in and make those melodies. And this is obviously, this is before Meloy too, so you couldn't really move things as easily. So I had to actually chop the words and move everything around. So I was treating it pre-production, like, Hey, this is a cool line, but what if we started on this note here, you sang that note here, so I'm just going to pull it over there. But even though the lyrics don't make sense, whatever. So then we just ended up hearing it back, and then I ran it by Anthony and he was like, dude, that's actually fucking sick, man. Let's just keep it like that. So that's how it ended up going. But as far as the process, yeah, I normally start with the rough take and I'll see what the singer has to offer and then I'll put in my 2 cents, I'll restructure a lot of things.

(01:48:45):

I'll have him try to sing things a certain way. I think that rhythm and timing and the way that the timing and the rhythm interacts with the actual words that they're saying. I'm sure you guys have ran into this problem a lot too. It's like when a singer comes in and it's a really impactful part of the chorus or something, and the lyric ends up being something like it's exactly, and that Lee lands on the down note and you're just like, oh, that's has no impact at all. We got to change that. We got to figure out a way to make that boom, that one of that chorus to hit hard. So you end up changing things around, maybe changing lyrics, and especially where the syllables, it's kind of like that old stupid saying, you got the wrong and fastest on the wrong sables. It's kind of like that, but just for vocals, I hope that answers the question

Speaker 3 (01:49:39):

And fastest. I remember

Speaker 4 (01:49:40):

That. Yeah. So it's like you wouldn't say like, fuck you. You would say it like, fuck you. So it's like, dude, it doesn't come across that way in the song. It sounds stupid. You got to make the emotion match. So that's how I attack it. Fuck you.

Speaker 2 (01:50:04):

So here's one from God. I am just ruining myself with these names. Celery Man, kettle Hol Larson. Oh, K-J-E-T-I-L. Dude, don't edit this Brendan. Dude, I'm trying my hardest too.

Speaker 4 (01:50:26):

You should have them.

Speaker 2 (01:50:28):

Your name is just tough.

Speaker 4 (01:50:29):

You should have them type out just the phonetic spelling of it

Speaker 2 (01:50:33):

Next time, or give me the YouTube link to how to pronounce the name. I give that to people for me. Let's

Speaker 3 (01:50:40):

Just make Siri read the names. Dude,

Speaker 2 (01:50:43):

That'd be amazing. So he's asking, I love the work you did on Emory's. You were never alone. I listened to the Break It Down podcast episode where you said something about not using as many drum samples and going for a more organic sound, not just on that record, but in general, what do you find most difficult in production or mixing when you're going for that sound compared to a more polished, edited to the grid drum replace sound?

Speaker 4 (01:51:09):

So I would say with the exception of the Emory Record, the biggest obstacle and the hardest thing is that when bands say they want a natural sound, they don't actually mean it because they're going to say that they wise point, they want to say that. And that's where, again, it comes to the kind of dog and pony show where it's like they want to know that they recorded nice natural sounds, but then it's like you're recording a singer songwriter band or a, I know, I can't even think of a band right now, but just a nice mellow band. And then you hand them the mixes and they hand you, then they're like, yo, our drums just aren't slamming. I'm listening to the new of Mice and Men Record, and their drums are just way more slamming. And you're like, yeah, no shit, they are. It's a totally different thing. And we're going for a natural sound.

(01:52:08):

You didn't actually want a natural sound, did you? But that would be the biggest obstacle as far as a lot of the times bands just don't actually know what they want. And I'm not saying that a producer knows best, but I think that it is our, because I don't agree with producers that just tell a band what they should have for breakfast or what their records should sound like. I think that it should kind of be a group decision. And I believe that my role is to help facilitate, get the best compromise between what I think and what they think. So a lot of the times I'm working really hard to facilitate what they want, but like I said, unfortunately, a lot of the times they don't know how to articulate what they want. And sometimes you have to really go through a lot of different choices and different options before you actually find out that when the drummer said he wants a cracky snare, your version of Cracky was like say, or actually, he's like, yeah, man, I want a really sick, huge snare drum.

(01:53:19):

And I'm thinking like, oh, okay, led Zeppelin or something. And he is like, no, man, three 11. And you're like, whoa, okay. It's like, what? That's not what I thought as huge and awesome. You know what I mean? But you know what I mean? Every band has their own terminology of what they think is like, oh, these are my clean vocals, or these are my, that's, this is the break. And especially too breakdowns. Breakdowns is something totally different for a hardcore band compared to a different mellow rock band. The breakdown might be the part where the song kind of falls apart and it's the bridge. So yeah, the terminology is another hard thing that you have to, and I think being a producer, you have to be able to be a linguistics expert and be able to understand

Speaker 3 (01:54:03):

Musical translator.

Speaker 4 (01:54:05):

Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:54:05):

I think it was our first episode. Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing, Joey, for, if anyone wants to hear more about that topic, our second podcast episode ever, it's called Musical Translator. It's a whole episode dedicated to just this, what you really have to be as a producer.

Speaker 4 (01:54:24):

Yeah, musical translator slash mind reader slash psychologist, everything. Babysitter. Hopefully that answers the question, right. Did I? Very

Speaker 3 (01:54:36):

Expensive, baby.

Speaker 4 (01:54:38):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:54:41):

Final question. And this is back to Michael, the artist known as Michael, and you've probably answered this a million times, but it has to be asked, what are the differences in working with Anthony and Cove and how did you approach such different types of sick?

Speaker 4 (01:54:59):

I mean, I'd say they have a lot of differences, but they also have a lot of similarities. Well, I don't know about that. I mean, working with Anthony is just one of those, you know, get in the room with someone. And when you get in with a truly great singer and their warmup take is them fucking around on the mic and doing the joke lyrics, and they're just like, oh man, I'm going to suck some dicks. And you're like, fuck, that was an amazing take. I'm totally with you. I believe everything you're saying. Let's go suck dicks.

(01:55:34):

And then you have another singer that is talking about something super profound and something that actually happened to you personally as a person, but you're just like, man, I don't know. I'm not buying it. I mean, Anthony is just one of those dudes where he can just say anything on the mic and you're just like, wow, that was incredible. That's a keeper. He's just one of those dudes that's like that great. And he's really able to convey the emotion of what he's doing. And even a lot of lyrics, they're so abstract, and it's like somehow you just like, yes, I want to fall from the pillows of the sky. I don't know what that means, but I'm on board. You know what I mean? He just has that ability to convince. And I mean, I think that's what makes him excellent and he really gets on himself about making it great and perfect.

(01:56:33):

So working with him is just one of those things where all you're trying, it's like that's the level of musician that we wish we could all work with, where it's like your only job is to not fuck it up. You know what I mean? You just have to make sure that your game staging is right, that you're not clipping any preamps because the last thing you want to do is on your first take before he actually sings, he nails the part perfectly and it's like you blew it because you had your preamp too hot or you were fucking something up. You know what I mean? That's where with the great musicians, I think that's where you really need to have your skills just on lock, because otherwise those are the people that are going to come in and you're going to have this amazing take and you blew it off of some stupid technical thing that you should have had dialed in.

(01:57:22):

But now obviously working with Anthony, now, he's a pro, whereas working with Cove, he had a lot going against him because he came from a Mormon family that he had never really left his family for an evening. I don't even think he had spent the night at a friend's house type of thing. It was very sheltered up until the point he joined our band. So I think when we did Warp tour together, that was quite a difference. Yeah, totally. Whereas Anthony was coming from substance abuse and fresh out of rehab. I mean, two totally different people, you know what I mean?

(01:58:06):

The way I met Anthony is there was this band called Days Away and they had recorded at a studio that I had been doing some work out of, and I was talking to their singer Keith, who plays in that band, good Old War, and I was like, Hey, Keith. And I was trying to actually kind of poach Keith and I was like, yo, Keith, do you have anybody that might be into joining a band? And I played him The Instrumentals kind of sounds like you, a little bit like anybody that might be wanting to join our band, and he just didn't get that. I was trying to poach him, which I wasn't really very clear about anyways, but he was like, yeah, there's this dude I know, but you probably don't want him. He is straight out of rehab and he's kind of a crazy person. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? I don't care if he can sing. He sounds perfect. He sounds like the ultimate lead singer. But yeah, so I mean, it's like, yeah, two totally different people as far as

Speaker 2 (01:58:58):

Kind of is the lead

Speaker 4 (01:58:59):

Singer. Yeah. And now of course, back to it, just ultimate lead, singer, everything. I went and watched them at The Shrine, which is this huge venue here in la and it was like every time I see him on stage, it's like, man, he's so captivating. There was a couple of times on this last tour where I think I even started forgetting to play my guitar. I was just watching him and I'm like, I'm having so much fun right now. This is insane. But yeah, I mean, he's awesome. But then with Cove, I think that he was just a young person. And I also think that combined with, at that period in my life, thinking that I knew everything, I don't necessarily think that I gave him a fair shot. I think that when you're, whatever, he was 18 maybe at the time, trying to fill the shoes of Anthony and having,

Speaker 2 (01:59:49):

Yeah, that's a tough one.

Speaker 4 (01:59:51):

I mean, trying to fill his shoes, being 18, first time leaving the house pretty much, and having the whole entire internet hating on you, telling you that you'll never be good. It was a really tough emotional thing. As well as when we did our self-titled record with Howard. Later we found out some of the things the producer tricks that Howard was doing was telling Cove that we all thought he sucked. And it was like the way he was trying to use psychology to get the performances out of him was like, your band thinks you suck. You're never going to make a record. I believe in you. We need to prove them wrong. We can get better than this. We can get better than this. Your band doesn't think you can do it, but I think you can. And none of these feelings ever came out until later years down the road.

(02:00:48):

We had that kind of a big band blowout. One night we were talking about doing a show, and it finally came out and it was like Howard always told me that you guys thought I sucked. And we were like, what are you talking about? None of this is even true. Where did this come from? Then? So finally he was like, I finally talked to him and he was like, yeah, Howard was always telling me how much you guys thought I sucked and I would always have to prove you wrong and do better takes. And I was like, wow, that's insane. But then it kind of all made sense because then I remember when we first started tracking our record, I got hit up by one of the guys in my chemical romance and they were like, yo, what's going on? And there was this weird awkward beef between us and it was like, what's going on here?

(02:01:36):

Why are you guys weird towards us? I thought we were friends. And then it was like, yeah, well, Howard told us that you thought we suck. And I was like, I don't know what's going, who says all this stuff? I'm like, oh, I get it. I can see how this is misunderstood. But we told Howard that we did not want our record to sound like three cheers from Sweet Revenge because it sounded like crap, we didn't say that you guys suck. He took that completely the wrong way. So it was like that was just one of those things where it was, again, trying to use those old, I guess the wrong, unhealthy motivational techniques to get people to work better. But yeah, so all that being said, working with Cove, I think that I never really gave him a fair shot because of where I was at at the time when I thought I was king of the world band guy and I knew everything. But yeah, aside from, I mean Cove just had to work at it a lot harder. Anthony's one of those guys. He's one of those athletes that just wakes up in the morning and can shoot three pointer shots in his sleep cove just has to work at it harder. And I think that combined with showing up to the studio, smoking and drinking a Trente cappuccino before doing vocals, he had a lot working against him.

Speaker 2 (02:02:53):

Well, I don't care what people say, talent is real, and I do believe that I have met more people who have less talent, who have gotten farther by working harder. There are still those types out there, the one in 10 million types that their genetics and their brain makeup

(02:03:16):

And whatever, the way that they were put on this earth, they're just built for one purpose. Kind of like this dude, gene Hoagland, this drummer we had on the podcast recently, legendary Metal drummer. It's like he was purpose built to be one of the most badass metal drummers in history and a story. It's like Anthony Green was just built to be that vocalist and whether or not he can do anything else in life, I don't know, because I don't know him personally, but it seems like he was purpose built to just be a fucking rock God vocalist.

Speaker 4 (02:04:01):

A hundred percent. Yeah. He's built to be on the stage with a mic. Sure.

Speaker 2 (02:04:05):

Well, Bo, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been awesome having you on, and you are great. Don't ever let them tell you different. I think I'd love to have you on again, and I know that it's going to be fun hanging out.

Speaker 4 (02:04:26):

Yeah, dude, I'm stoked, man. I think it's going to be really fun, and I hope people can learn some stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:04:34):

Oh, I know they will, man. I think that that mix sounds killer, and just through talking with you, you've actually done a lot more pre-planning than a lot of the guest mixers do for Nail The Mix, and you've got really, really killer ideas on topics you want to cover. So I know that it's going to be a great educational time and fun just because get to hear awesome stories.

Speaker 4 (02:05:02):

I don't know if they're quite as good as the pooping out on the lawn, but there's some good ones. That one's amazing.

Speaker 1 (02:05:11):

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